A ray of sunshine for those with similar struggles.
The odds for a positive outcome from pregnancy while battling cancer might seem improbably long, but Hosford’s hopeful debut memoir proves that, with a little bit of luck and lots of grit, it is entirely possible.
At just 37, fit, and a nonsmoker, Hosford seemed like one of the unlikeliest candidates for a devastating disease. Nevertheless, there it was—a suspicious lump in her breast that proved to be one of the most virulent types of breast cancers: triple negative. Barely settled into the surreal aftermath of the dreaded diagnosis, she was dealt another piece of news: she was pregnant, even after being told she was suffering from secondary infertility after the birth of her son, Ethan. In fact, it was precisely why the Hosfords had decided to adopt a baby girl from China, due to arrive in a few months. Handling even one of these life-altering events would be difficult enough for anybody, but Hosford went through it all with grace and a lot of help from her mom, sister Jenn, and especially her patient and steely husband, Grant. Hosford precisely captures the roller coaster of emotions she experiences, all “mixed, blended or pureed.” Understandably, she was envious of others’ seemingly normal lives and desperate to voice her fears and have her concerns validated. The family’s relief that the cancer was “only” stage 1 was an indication of just how much their standards had been recalibrated. Fortunately, as the memoir’s subtitle suggests, the harrowing account has a happy ending. At one point, Hosford recalls: “I need something to aspire to, stories that give me hope and maybe even a smile while I trudge through my ‘journey.’ ” And that’s exactly what this moving memoir delivers. “Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. Being brave is being scared out of your mind, and doing what you need to do anyway,” Grant once reminded her. By that measure, Hosford might have been bald, fat, and crazy—but also incredibly courageous.
A ray of sunshine for those with similar struggles.Pub Date: May 28, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Nothing But The Truth Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlanticsenior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.
The Book of Genesis as imagined by a veteran voice of underground comics.
R. Crumb’s pass at the opening chapters of the Bible isn’t nearly the act of heresy the comic artist’s reputation might suggest. In fact, the creator of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural is fastidiously respectful. Crumb took pains to preserve every word of Genesis—drawing from numerous source texts, but mainly Robert Alter’s translation, The Five Books of Moses (2004)—and he clearly did his homework on the clothing, shelter and landscapes that surrounded Noah, Abraham and Isaac. This dedication to faithful representation makes the book, as Crumb writes in his introduction, a “straight illustration job, with no intention to ridicule or make visual jokes.” But his efforts are in their own way irreverent, and Crumb feels no particular need to deify even the most divine characters. God Himself is not much taller than Adam and Eve, and instead of omnisciently imparting orders and judgment He stands beside them in Eden, speaking to them directly. Jacob wrestles not with an angel, as is so often depicted in paintings, but with a man who looks not much different from himself. The women are uniformly Crumbian, voluptuous Earth goddesses who are both sexualized and strong-willed. (The endnotes offer a close study of the kinds of power women wielded in Genesis.) The downside of fitting all the text in is that many pages are packed tight with small panels, and too rarely—as with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—does Crumb expand his lens and treat signature events dramatically. Even the Flood is fairly restrained, though the exodus of the animals from the Ark is beautifully detailed. The author’s respect for Genesis is admirable, but it may leave readers wishing he had taken a few more chances with his interpretation, as when he draws the serpent in the Garden of Eden as a provocative half-man/half-lizard. On the whole, though, the book is largely a tribute to Crumb’s immense talents as a draftsman and stubborn adherence to the script.
An erudite and artful, though frustratingly restrained, look at Old Testament stories.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-393-06102-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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